Okay, I follow your logic, but I still think it's an unnecessary stretch. Personally, I think I'm still comfortable with Enterprise and series 17 being Constitution-class ships.

Actually, I'm more for rejecting Jein's numbers all together. I realize later day Trek went with them and enshrined many of them in the on-screen canon, but I'm willing to ignore such business.

I won't bother preaching on behalf of FJ's Star Fleet Technical Manual, as I know many people here simply won't have it, but I always thought his registry numbers (especially for the Enterprise sister ships) seemed more sensible. The way the Status Chart is played in "Court Martial" suggests that those ships are at the Starbase "now" and it always rubbed me the wrong way that nearly all the Enterprise sister ships would be there at once, being worked on.

On the other hand, I am in favor of MJ notion of ship numbers being DDSS where D is the design series number and S is the individual hull number, which would make the status chart showing ships of three different classes being worked on. Make better sense to me.

Anyway, I feel I'm beginning to ramble, so I'll go away now.

--Alex

P.S. I was looking through my copy of the Concordance (which I expect is the same edition as yours, Robert Comsol) and you should look up the entry for NCC-1701. There's a little tidbit there I think you'll enjoy...